Category: Android

Keeping this short and to keep myself from having to repeat these instructions all the time for developers trying to understand the Android and iOS build process and how you need to download and compile certain things with apps. Mainly since NativeScript is not running a webview and you can’t drop a javascript file and start working with third party libraries without a build step.

We’ve all seen it, horizontal scrolling lists in our favorite apps. Google uses this UI concept in its Play Store app to list related apps horizontally. It’s slick and works well to show off a small set of items that are related.

Okay, so not everyone will need to record audio from a device in their mobile application, but it’s still a pretty kick-ass feature to add to your app. This tutorial will be short and sweet. We are going to use the nativescript-audio plugin. You can find the repo here. A pal of mine, Nathan Walker, contributed the iOS version and did a lot of the TypeScript cleanup on the code base so thanks to him for his contribution. This plugin actually records and plays back audio. I plan on doing a follow up on playing audio later on.

Thanks Google!

There is this awesome new feature for Android apps to use what is called Custom Tabs. What this feature does is allows your Android app to open external content inside Goolge Chrome and not in the traiditonal webview. You can set the color of the toolbar, the enter/exit animations, icons, and menu options. It’s a really nice addition to Android apps when you have links to external content, it keeps the user experience very smooth. There is an advanced usage where you can actually pre load in the background, which Google claims can save 700ms of loading time so it might be worth it for apps using webviews a lot.

The Story…

I’ve seen a few comments on various channels about how to change the status bar, navigation bar, and full screen layouts on Android in a NativeScript app. In this post I want to cover a few scenarios and how to achieve the specific layout you want in your app. So lets get started.